I disagree that too many crew survives, on the contrary I find it inconsistent that most of your crew survive if you loose a battle, but you can only find a couple of survivors when you win (2 or 3 survivors for a fleet worth of enemies defeated? While the game make a clear mention of the presence of escape pods? Really?)
The presence of escape pods by no means indicates a high likelihood of surviving the disabling of a ship. Ships in Starsector appear to explode when disabled, and even though the explosion isn't (usually) sufficiently powerful to obliterate the vessel, this by no means indicates that the vessel's crew survived the detonation. The flash indicating that a ship is disabled is typically much larger and much brighter than that given off by a Reaper torpedo detonating, indicating that the explosion is probably much more powerful; additionally, this explosion is likely internal (e.g. a magazine explosion or a catastrophic reactor failure), and so the crew is potentially less well protected against it than against weapons, which (mostly) detonate externally on the ship's hull.
Some historical references for how much of the crew survives when the ship explodes:
Spoiler
USS Maine, armored cruiser or second-rate pre-dreadnought battleship, which exploded in the harbor in Havana in 1898. Of the crew of 355, 253 either died in the explosion or drowned before being rescued and 8 others died due to injuries or shock. Of the survivors, 16 were uninjured.
HMS Bulwark, pre-dreadnought battleship, destroyed by an internal explosion at Sheerness in 1914. 14 survivors, 736 dead; two of the survivors later succumbed to injuries in the hospital.
HMS Incincible, battlecruiser, sunk at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. 6 members of the crew survived, 1026 officers and men died.
HMS Queen Mary, battlecruiser, sunk at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. 18 survivors, 1266 crew and officers died.
HMS Indefatigable, battlecruiser, sunk at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. 2 survivors out of a crew of 1019.
HMS Vanguard, battleship, sunk by internal explosion at Scapa Flow in 1917. 2 survivors and about 804 dead.
HMS Hood, battleship or battlecruiser depending on who you ask, sunk by the Bismark in 1941. 3 survivors out of 1418 men.
HMS Barham, battleship, torpedoed and exploded in the Mediterranean in 1941. 841 of a crew of about 1184 perished.
USS Arizona, battleship, sunk at Pearl Harbor. 1177 crewmen died on board it.
HMS Avenger, escort carrier, torpedoed and suffered explosion of the bomb magazine in 1942. 12 survivors out of a crew of 550.
Mutsu, Japanese battleship, sunk in harbor by a magazine explosion in 1943. 1121 of 1474 people aboard the ship died.
Roma, Italian battleship, sunk by magazine explosion caused by a German missile in 1943. 596 survivors out of 1849 crew and officers.
USS Liscome Bay, escort carrier, torpedoed and sunk by magazine explosion in 1943. 272 survivors out of 916 crew.
Yamato, Japanese battleship, sunk by carrier-borne aircraft in 1945 and suffered a magazine explosion while sinking. About 3055 out of 3332 crew and officers perished.
Numbers pulled from the Wikipedia pages on the respective ships, or from the Wikipedia page on largest artificial non-nuclear explosions.
While the degree to which the crew is protected against explosions, internal or external, may (and probably has) improved by the time of Starsector, the power of the explosions against which the crew must be protected would also have increased. I do not see the mention of the presence of escape pods as sufficient justification for the claim that significant fractions of the crew should survive the sudden, violent explosions that disable Starsector ships. Additionally, since Starsector's ships keep fighting as well as they can up until the explosion, it's not particularly likely that the commanding officer of the vessel gives the order to abandon ship any significant amount of time before the ship explodes, and timely evacuation tends to be one of the best ways to mitigate losses to massive explosions, regardless of how well the ship was compartmentalized to protect the crew.
Furthermore, when the game lists the number of crew recovered, it's listing the number of people pulled from the wrecks and escape pods who either already serve in your fleet or who are willing to serve in your fleet that you're willing to enlist (and if we're treating this as a typical military situation under modern rules, then you don't enlist rescued enemies into your crews under normal circumstances). Maybe if and when the game includes some kind of prisoner mechanic we'll see larger numbers of people rescued when we win battles.
I'd like to imagine they're making tiny impromptu shelters to drag the crew along with them. Crew and lifesupport is heavy, but i feel like it's still not as much as cargo.
For what it's worth, I'd imagine that impromptu shelters would be more likely to impose a speed restriction than cargo would be. You're (hopefully) at least as concerned for the safety of the personnel in the impromptu shelters as you would be for the cargo, which means that you'd want to take care to avoid causing stresses to the structure supporting the shelters and connecting them to the ship, and to the components and power lines and equipment keeping them livable. Much of the cargo in the game is also of things which tend to be less delicate than people are. Having to keep personnel in impromptu shelters connected in some manner to the ship is thus a fairly good reason to restrict the ship's maximum acceleration, and if you require that the ship be able to complete a given maneuver (e.g. a standard course correction to avoid an asteroid) in a given amount of time, then that restriction on acceleration also restricts the ship's maximum speed.
@Aeson
I was trying to provide real historical examples, not theoretical ones, to your argument... No need to take that as an attack.
Sorry.